Lawmakers see Edward Snowden as a leaker, not as a hero

Lawmakers in both parties Wednesday said they do not view Edward Snowden as a hero, as the NSA leaker reemerged with new charges against the government and defiant vows to fight extradition. [WATCH VIDEO]

Snowden, a former employee of Booz Allen Hamilton and the CIA, said in a new interview Wednesday that he saw himself as neither a traitor nor a hero, but as an American.

At the same time, he cast himself as someone who had leaked his country’s sensitive secrets about telephone and Internet data mining to protect private citizens in the U.S. and other countries from an intrusive government.

“Last week the American government happily operated in the shadows with no respect for the consent of the governed, but no longer,” he told the South China Morning Post. “Every level of society is demanding accountability and oversight.”

Some of Snowden’s comments seemed designed to appeal to the governments in China and Hong Kong.

He said he has information that shows the U.S. since 2009 has been hacking into computers in China and Hong Kong — a charge that comes as the Obama administration and U.S. companies are accusing China of hacking.

Snowden said U.S. targets included a Chinese university and public officials, businesses and students.

In leaking the information, he said he wanted to demonstrate “the hypocrisy of the U.S. government when it claims that it does not target civilian infrastructure, unlike its adversaries.”

He also said he would fight any efforts to extradite him to face charges in the United States, and that he would stay in Hong Kong “until I am asked to leave.”

His exact whereabouts are unclear.

“I have had many opportunities to flee Hong Kong, but I would rather stay and fight the U.S. government in the courts, because I have faith in Hong Kong’s rule of law,” he told the paper.

The revelation of the NSA’s spying programs occurred as the Obama administration is already facing abuse-of-power charges for the Justice Department’s monitoring of journalists’ phone records and the targeting of conservative groups by the Internal Revenue Service.

Snowden’s actions have generated support from a strange combination of liberal advocates, conservative activists and civil-liberties groups, who say the NSA programs tread too deeply on constitutional rights.

Liberal filmmaker Michael Moore and conservative radio host Glenn Beck have both labeled Snowden a “hero,” and Tea Party activists on Wednesday held an event outside the Capitol in which they “flogged” a likeness of King “for his treachery” in criticizing Snowden.

Still, even the Senate’s libertarian firebrand declined to cast judgment on Snowden’s actions on the whole.

“We’ve had other people in our history that have been glorified over civil disobedience,” he said, “and so how you judge him and how he made the judgment to be civilly disobedient is something I don’t want to make a judgment on.”

“What’s a whistle-blower and what’s someone who [has] leaked information that could be harmful to some of our American assets who are trying to protect American citizens? I don’t know the answer to that,” he said.